There were times during the warm-up period and the seven-on-seven passing drills Saturday in which the ball seemed to come off the hand of No. 2 quarterback Timmy Chang, the former University of Hawaii star and the most prolific passer in NCAA history, a lot cleaner than it did for Henson. But if Henson's release is undeniably tardy at times, his smile is a quick one, and the Saturday morning effort, as uneven as it was on occasion, elicited a wide grin.

During the scrimmage, there was some hesitancy, an occasional absence of natural rhythm. And there were times when one could almost envision the wheels turning in Henson's head before he stepped up to throw. There is even some suspicion that Chang, who played in a June Jones-designed run-and-shoot offense at Hawaii, and who has experienced far more exposure to a sophisticated passing game than Henson, could steal away with the starting job.

Rhein head coach Jim Tomsula's intensity is running off on his players. (waynepaulo.com)
At any given moment during todayâ€™s scrimmage against the Amsterdam Admirals you were bound to see Fireâ€™s Head Coach Jim Tomsula, jolting up and down the sideline monitoring his players, screaming assignments from the top of his lungs and even on occasions running in the huddle demonstrating a technique.

This hands-on approach has stayed consistent through out training camp and is designed to increase the intensity in his players while maintaining their focus.

Is this working?

Defensive ends Zach Ville and Walter Curry certainly believe so.

Ville who was in on a couple of quarterback rushes and sacks today says all good individual plays are just a result of great team play and from adopting their coaches attitudes.

â€œThe defensive line played a whole lot better than we did in the last scrimmage and I had some good plays, but the only reason is because everyone else around me did their job,â€ Ville continued, â€œWhen we see coach hyper that just gets us amped up and ready to go out and play the best we can.â€

The Fire defensive line play was evident in two fourth down punt plays for the Admirals. On both plays the Admirals long snapper to punter exchanged were disrupted by the Firesâ€™ irritating defense causing two safeties.

Curry says that this type of play is due to the forward strides of each weekâ€™s practice. â€œThe type of practices we have creates the chemistry that we need in order to play at our own tempo. Our defense was waiting for their offense, our coverage was there and our offense was running plays fluently.â€

This Fire offense that Curryâ€™s referring to was consistent all day in driving the ball down the field, but they were never quite able to finish in the red zone.

On two series quarterbacks Timmy Chang and John Bowenkamp orchestrated successful drives by swift handoffs and finding open receivers.

Wide Receiver Chris Samp, who caught a couple of big yard balls during those series says that he was happy with the overall ball movement.

â€œWith the way that our offense is set up any receiver can get the ball at any time depending on the defense. As a unit we moved the ball well with the exception of a couple of mistakes, but weâ€™ll clean up a lot of that in practice.â€

Two of those mistakes mentioned came on a pair of interceptions by Admirals cornerbacks Kevin Timothee and Marvin Ward.

Chang realizes that those interceptions are not acceptable and heâ€™ll definitely do his part to correct that as much as possible.

â€œWe have to eliminate those. Although we were successful in driving the ball down the field a couple of times our job is to protect the ball and after we look at everything weâ€™ll do our best to correct that,â€ said Chang.

Coach Tomsula is very pleased with the effort of his quarterbacks so far, but there red zone efficiency is indeed on his mind.

During these scrimmages the special teams units are displayed at the end of practice, so the only red zone option today was a touchdown, but that wasnâ€™t the result.

â€œWe have a bunch of guys competing like hell for a job, but we donâ€™t need to give up the ball on offense. We have to take care of the ball in the red zone and as long as we stay on the Rhein Fireâ€™s program we can fix it.â€

"Do, or do not. There is no 'try'."
- Yoda ('The Empire Strikes Back')

This is awesome news. I will call Adrian White, the defensive coordinator for the Rhine and get his read on Timmy. Adrian played for me in high school and we talk every month. Let me see what I can find out.

CoachKen wrote:This is awesome news. I will call Adrian White, the defensive coordinator for the Rhine and get his read on Timmy. Adrian played for me in high school and we talk every month. Let me see what I can find out.